TYT Network
Rick Santorum recently announced that he would be running for President under the GOP ticket. Recently, Fox News announced that its Republican presidential primary debate in August would include only the 10 candidates polling the highest in national surveys. After the announcement, Rick Santorum denounced the criteria, according to The New York Times.
“In January of 2012, I was at 4 percent in the national polls, and I won the Iowa caucuses,” said Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania, who is now near the bottom of most national surveys.
Fox News announced Thursday that the debate competitors would be determined by averaging their last five major national polls. The top 10 competitors will be allowed to debate. The field could expand to 11 if there’s a tie for 10th, according to CBS News.
Santorum’s concern may be legitimate. The situation is reminiscent of Ron Paul in 2012. Paul was excluded from the first Fox debate that year although he performed well in some polls. The 2011 Straw Poll showed that Ron Paul was a legitimate candidate in Iowa. Paul finished second. Paul finished third in the caucuses with 21 percent of the vote, according to the publication The Iowa Republican. Paul also placed first in a Fox News poll, but Fox changed the location of the poll on their website to an area difficult to find, writes RT.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/27/politics/rick-santorum-2016-campaign-focus/
OK, Fine. 
Reblogged this on Nevada State Personnel Watch.
I don’t know. I kind of get the issue from the perspective of those responsible for organizing the debates. There’s a point at which putting too many candidates up on the stage becomes just a circus. But the reality is that getting to ten is pretty much circus-like already. I mean, seriously, what’s the difference between ten and twelve or fourteen. The real cut off should be much lower. Problem with that is that it really is impossible at this point to identify which of the candidates are the most credible. So, here’s an idea, maybe they shouldn’t be identifying the rules for this until much later in the process. I mean, the first primary/caucus is still at least eight months away. Maybe we could wait until … oh, November, to decide how the debates will be organized.
As a Democrat, the beauty of this is that the Republican Party will be an absolute mess with all of these candidates firing shots at each other, which can only help the Democratic nominee. Oh wait, that’s likely going to be Hillary. Never mind.
Thanks for your comment. There is some info out there about the questionable treatment of Ron Paul during the last presidential election. He was apparently doing well in many polls but was not invited to the first Fox News debate.
Was it because of Paul’s anti-war beliefs?